


Turning Saints into the Sea

by Antivigilante, Chanonvic



Series: ArthurxZatanna [1]
Category: Aquaman (2018), DCU (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Collaboration, F/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unrequited Crush, alternate chapter contribution, duty vs desire, torn between worlds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2019-11-15 23:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antivigilante/pseuds/Antivigilante, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chanonvic/pseuds/Chanonvic
Summary: He realized it'd been nearly 5 years since he lived on the surface. And nearly 10 since he'd been to a state fair. But time flies when you're an aquatic demigod courting disaster with a sorceress.Part 1M rating, eventually.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of an ArthurxZatanna Collab series with ao3 user Chanonvic. Our bigger collab series is DCU crackships (maybe Marvel too?)
> 
> As such I've cast the first stone and written chapter 1 because the ship generator gave me ArthurxZatanna 3 times so good had spoken. 
> 
> Chapter 2 will be by Chanonvic and we will alternate till our little drabble story is done.  
> Enjoy!

He'd realized it'd been nearly 5 years since he'd lived on the surface. And nearly 10 since he'd been to a state fair. 

Zatanna Zatarra had a way of making him recall the deepest hidden parts of himself. Even the parts he'd hidden intentionally. 

He watched her perform a trick from across the main bay with a bright hazel glower. A common sleight of hand that expertly summoned a randomly tucked card or two. 

He thumbed away a long lock of sunbleached hair. His mind suggested other tucked away treasures she could summon magically. 

Hmmph.

Although a sorceress of scant equal, Zatanna still performed every card flip and hat trick with cherished reverance, as if they were the greatest feats of mystery the universe ever conceived. 

Perhaps next there was something she could help him dissappear.

Part of him, the part that was a boy living in a lighthouse by the sea with his steadfast, wise father, recalled a traveling fair that passed by but once a spring to his small coastal province, a good 3 hour's drive from home. 

He'd only ever been once, with said endlessly laboring father--forever tasked with dutifully watching over his fellow seamen--and the drive was tiring. However the sights and sounds had been extraordinary, the sugary food sublime, and although his visit was brief, it remained one of his finest memories of a life he no longer remained on the path of. A life of mundane, and comfort, and easy wonder. 

The other part, the only part nowadays, choked out these fantasies with the strength of a churning Xebellian riptide. It buried it, far below the wave of responsibility and glorious rebirth. A part that embraced the ancient and ancestral bloodstream and denounced this other world that made him somehow unworthy yet crowed of his inborn greatness. 

_Yet it was that other world that welcomed him best._

This part offered no sweet nothings or easy small talk. It suggested no gifts or chivalrous gestures. It imparted no carefree hope. No, this side of him merely reminded him of his duty as a patrician merman. A regal line to be sown into the strongest and most noble of all merwomen. Eventually. 

The duty he carried was ensuring the continuation of his resplendent race. His was a destiny of kings. For kings. 

There would be no surface world romance. Not now. Not again. He was an Atlantean now. He fought for the seven seas and the world above was of no concern, save for when it was in danger. 

He had a Queen. Fiance. Princess. A red-haired fairytale bride who fought and debated with the best of them. Zatanna was no Mera. Hell, she wasn't even a Diana.

Arthur scratched his beard absently.

But when she sat next to him in the aircraft hangar and smiled so sweetly, as if all the world was as it should be and every road would eventually lead you home, he thought briefly she might be an Atlanna. 

A woman with hope and adventure. Who saw more than duty and destiny, even as she gazed right at the primordial cosmic soup of order and chaos, and saw eternal struggle- hardship. 

Yes, Zatanna Zatarra was like the regent Queen. A bright, beautiful light who shone true. The moon who steered the tide. 

A tap on his broad shoulder had him turning in his aircraft seat to face behind him. Nearly a foot down and a few inches apart he curiously met the lagoon stare of the acquainted magician. With a cheeky, friendly smile she wiggled her gloved fingers and made a motion. Pushing his fallen locks away she fumbled behind his ear, tickling the thin skin before pulling back to reveal a plucked gold dubloon that's seen some wear. 

With a quirk of the brow, Arthur pinches it and inspects the genuine Atlantean currency before trailing his back-lit, murky greenish gaze to the still grinning magician. Her cheeks puffed with their chortling at his muted amusement. 

It was wrong, the thoughts, and he couldn't even recall when it had started. One day he was gruffly skimming over introductions and the next he was cutting open a vest and buttoned shirt to pump saltwater out of flooded lungs. 

She'd come to Atlantis once, the resident expert on magic, tasked with aiding the defeat of Gamemnae, the sea witch. You'd been captured, of course, and turned into a wraith under her thrall. 

Compassionate Zatanna had struggled and fret to undo the spell but come hell and high-water she'd stuck through to the bitter end and remained even when the fight became dangerous. Even when _he_ became dangerous. 

And when she lay beneath him on a sandy inlet, bare-chested and choking out seawater with her eyes tearfully glistening, a shameful, hot thrum lanced through his core. She'd saved him, at a large risk to her person, and he'd rushed to return the favor for his friend. 

But that part of him, that worshipped the old ways and filled him with buried instincts, whispered that she'd make a fine _hetaera_. A little slice of his old life. Their children would atleast be interesting, if not wondrous. 

He stared reverently at her sweet smile again, before it softened to fondness, and she turned to beam it towards another group of young eager heroes, excited to see proof of a higher cosmic power. Even if the higher power was making a rabbit appear from a hat. 

Arthur Curry was no average human. Cold and wet and dark, his life teemed with the secrets of the deep and wartorn glory that remained hidden away as myth. 

But when Zatanna Zatarra performed for him, as if he was the only one in the room, for a brief moment he was a scruffy teen in denim waiting in line for warm funnel cake. And somehow that life was just as awesome.


	2. Golden-Plated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zatanna reflects on her feelings (or whatever they are) toward Arthur.

Zatanna stared openly at the book before her but wasn't absorbing the text. She didn't know when exactly her thoughts had drifted, but she was distracted by recalled impressions of a salty tang in the air, of the warmth of sorcery pricking at her skin, of gold-rimmed eyes staring down at her as apathy melted into shock into concern.

Zatanna absently touched her chest, right over her heart, then dropped her hand gracelessly when she caught what she was doing. Though she knew it was wrong of her, she couldn't quite shake the memory of his touch against her delicate skin. And though the coldness in his face while he was bewitched made her shiver, the mixture of fear and regret he sported when she snapped him out of it made her stomach quiver with...something. Excitement? Relief? Anticipation? She wasn't sure.

She sighed and shook her head, sparing the spellbook an apologetic look. Deducing Klarion the Witch Boy's latest self-indulgent plot might have to have to wait until the next full moon. Zatanna couldn't focus for longer than a minute at a time, apparently, and it was dangerous not to give magic one's undivided attention.

Her gaze fell on the still gleaming trinket on her shelf across the room. Muttering a quick charm, she waved her hand and commanded the thing to float over to her. It was a rune hailing from the old days of Atlantis, when the city was still on the surface. It had amplified Gamemnae's curse, and defacing the rune was integral to disrupting her plot. Afterwards, Aquaman -- Arthur -- had insisted she keep it. Even vandalised, it housed power that any sorceress would envy. She figured it was his way of apologizing for her near death, or else paying her for a job well done. And while keeping mission souvenirs was more Dick's thing than hers, she had been too dazed and relieved to flat out refuse, as she should have.

It could also have been a gift. Zatanna's hands closed tightly over the rune, and she could feel the warmth of its magic radiate into her palm, but she paid it no mind in favor of inspecting that thought more closely. A gift from Aquaman -- or a gift from Arthur? The difference was cavernous, spanning the range from professional courtesy, to regal benevolence, to something she dared not entertain. The knot in her stomach quivered again, making her question what exactly she _wanted_ it to mean?

She thought back to a few nights ago, when she was performing at a traveling fair, to the delight of several children, their parents, and one Atlantean king, apparently. She had noticed she was being watched almost immediately, but hero training made her immediately suspicious. She figured a ne'er-do-well was casing the place, or else some henchman was doing their boss's dirty work, so right after the show, she had gone up to the bluff overlooking the fairgrounds to investigate. Zatanna remembered sighing softly in relief even while her heart marched away with nervous excitement. There stood Arthur Curry in his regal glory with starry sky above and rejoicing waves below.

The image was so perfect that she couldn't resist her little game. Summoning the dubloon had been simple enough: she'd seen plenty scattered in the outskirts of Atlantis and plucked one of them. Watching the surprise in his face give way to amusement, however, was infinitely more difficult. That expression -- the tight quirk of his lips holding back a smile, the gleam in his eyes that had nothing to do with his ancestry, the furrow in his brow she couldn't quite decipher -- was what ignited her stomach's gymnastics routine, and that the feeling hadn't gone away yet was...troubling.

When she and Nightwing had gone to consort with Aquaman, king of seas, it was easy to chalk up her reactions to the rare sight of beholding him in his natural setting, or to the pain of failure at seeing him possessed, or to the rush of relief at having rescued him. But that night, in the middle of an admittedly mundane, forgettable fair, they were both playing the part of _normal_. Their little tryst had been colleague to colleague, friend to friend, audience to entertainer. So why did it feel like something more?

Zatanna shook her head to clear her thoughts. No. This was wrong. She did _not_ have feelings for Aquaman; he certainly did _not_ have feelings for her. He was well on his way to being married to someone of his own race, his own _class_ , while she had a magical plot to stop. She spared the rune in her hand a grimace before flicking it back over to her shelf. With a deep breath, she exhaled all thoughts of Atlantis and its king from her mind and opened her spellbook again to brush up on interrupting summoning rituals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zatanna plays a little hard to get. ;)  
> -Chanonvic

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think? Please leave comments for both myself and Chanonvic. And check out her other works! She's far more accomplished than me.


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